A Major League Baseball (MLB) Swing Quality Metric

Abstract: We propose a quantitative metric to evaluate a MLB player’s offensive ability against a given pitch. Our swing quality metric should be used in concert with scouting reports and existing metrics to provide player evaluators with a more complete view of a hitter’s ability. Existing advanced baseball metrics do not consider the: (1) type of pitch, (2) velocity of the pitch, and (3) location of the pitch inside or outside of the strike zone in one statistic. Our metric addresses this shortcoming. An explanation of our methodology is provided and an evaluation against existing advanced metrics is performed.